The GNU/Linux Matters non-profit, which is dedicated to Internet Freedomware advocacy, has completed a full re-design of its translation system. Now, with new translations of GetGNULinux.org and increased linking, it wants to find 1,000,000 Windows visitors over the course of one year. There are many ways to participate.

When Jason Perlow reported on last week’s Microsoft Technology Summit, he sought to compliment the company by giving CEO Steve Ballmer a Gorbachev-like birthmark (right).

But Gorbachev was a Communist. He wasn’t elected. He was the product of a dictatorial society which was rotting from the inside, and his final achievement was to preside over its dissolution.

But if the birthmark fits…

As we approach Wednesday’s announcement on the ISO decision concerning Office Open XML, the format for Microsoft Word, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the process has been, well, Gorbachevian.

Peter Judge writes that at the recent meeting in Geneva, 17 of the 120 delegates met to judge Microsoft’s standards application were Microsoft employees, while others were employed by Microsoft affiliates.

Rather than actually dealing with 81 final questions about the standard, they were given a “batch approval,” which Brazilian delegate Jomar Silva called “the least ridiculous” way to proceed.

This would be funny if the implications were not so serious. Once this proprietary format is approved as an international standard, the bell can’t be unwrung. And once this Sovietized process succeeds in creating such a standard, a precedent is set.

It has to be said. This may not be the end of an era, but the beginning of one.

When Lenin’s faction was consolidating its power within the early Communist party, he gave it the name Bolshevik, from the Russian meaning greater.

His was, at the time, a minority view, but eventually his opponents accepted the name Menshevik, meaning less, and they were eventually crushed by the revolution.

What Microsoft seems to have achieved before the ISO is nothing less than a Bolshevik revolution, overthrowing what was supposed to be a judicial process, replacing it with a dictatorship of the Ballmertariat.

In the end, the picture with Perlow’s piece was wrong. The baldness is right. But instead of a birthmark, perhaps a beard and a mustache would have been more appropriate.

This was not the end of something, it was the beginning of something. Something far more dangerous to international trade and industry than a software standard.

The standards system has itself been overthrown, replaced by international governanace of the strong man. Fine if he’s our strong man, but what happens when he isn’t?

How I wish this were an April Fool’s joke.

An Information Week article published last week appears to position Microsoft as trying to do something right when it comes to open source. And it positions the open source community as being not quite ready to make nice after past insults, threats, and abuse. Speaking for myself, I am always ready to see what somebody has to say when they say they want to work with the open source community. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to be continuing its campaign of defining open source on its own terms, terms that violate the basic principles of our community.

It?s no small secret. I hate Microsoft. I think they are the most vile and corrupt corporation in the tech industry. Their monopoly hampers innovation and they favor litigation, corruption and marketing tricks to maintain their position over simply creating great products. I have read and heard many people claim Microsoft is changing, improving, and the evil Microsoft of the pass is fading; I strongly disagree with this view, and it takes no more then a cursory look through Microsoft?s actions in 2007 to see why.

Much has been said about the evils of vendor lock-in. The reality is that there are definite advantages to being a "Windows shop," particularly in terms of manageability and unified IT support. via LinuxWorld

According to multiple observers, Microsoft’s OpenXML is on its way to becoming an ISO standard. The three sites that have been following the International Organization for Standardization re-vote on the OpenXML standard?Command Line Warriors, Open Malaysia and ConsortiumInfo?are all reporting that, barring some unforeseen circumstances, OpenXML will become an ISO standard. Since none of the authors at these sites is pro-OpenXML, it seems a foregone conclusion that Microsoft was successful in its OpenXML standardization efforts.

bprom is a console application used to handle (E)EPROMs with the µ-prom and µ-prom 2001 programmers by the German brand Dr. Böhm GmbH. The µ-prom 2000 and µ-prom 3000 are still untested, but should work in 2001 mode.

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License: GNU General Public License v2

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Changes:
This release brings µ-prom support. -p (select programmer model) has been fixed.